50% of the New Congressmen Deny Climate Change

titusandtheraindrops:

mohandasgandhi:

Ah, the fallout from the 2010 midterm elections — it just keeps on getting more depressing, at least from a climate and clean energy perspective. Yes, the folks over at Think Progress did some background research on the incoming Congressmen, and they reveal a disheartening stat: 50% of them outright deny that climate change is real. Nice.

Here’s the breakdown from Think Progress:

A new ThinkProgress investigation has found that the incoming GOP freshman class is rife with legislators who not only oppose climate change legislation, but deny that manmade global warming even exists …
Here is a snapshot of the GOP Class of 2010:

- 50% deny the existence of manmade climate change

- 86% are opposed to any climate change legislation that increases government revenue

Hooray! We can now look forward to many more years of the status quo — which, of course means continued dominance from the heavily subsidized oil industry, reliance on foreign oil, and increased industry-wide greenhouse gas emissions right at a time when we’re on track to have experienced the hottest year ever recorded.

And for the record, for would-be commenters who feel that this vitriol is aimed at all Republicans everywhere, it’s not — there is nothing overtly “leftist” about the above stats. That’s all they are; stats. Half of the incoming GOP congressmen are on record saying that they don’t believe in climate change. Period. So if it makes you uncomfortable that I am relaying these facts, I apologize — these soon-to-be Congressmen are the ones on record saying they reject the decades of sound evidence compiled by scientists that shows human-made emissions are warming the atmosphere, not me.

I’m glad at least one other person senses the frustration that I do. A lot of people have worked incredibly hard to get to where we are today, which is no where near where we need to be. As the clock continues to tick, we’re still fooling around with people who refuse to believe facts - who are being told 2 + 2 = 4 and are instead contending the actual answer is 5. This is embarrassing. Do you have any idea how ridiculous this makes us look to the rest of the world? We need to amp up our math and science education and pass campaign finance reform. This just can’t continue anymore. We’re hurting other people now - we’re hurting Earth.

We are all one living breathing entity in a tiny speck of the cosmos and there is just one Earth. We are all a part of something much greater than ourselves and we have one very, very short shot at life. We can use that time to destroy the very thing that gave and sustained our lives or we can attempt to undo the damages of the past and let future beings decide how they want to spend their time on Earth. It’s up to us.

We must appear Taliban-like to the rest of the world: ignorant, superstitious, stubborn, and cruel.